A year ago, the Especiales Meals and Catering Facebook page was flush with photos of stacked tamales and rows of enchiladas in foil trays. Co-owner Sherrie Bazan was taking business classes at College of the Redwoods, securing a business license and hunting around for a food truck and a commercial kitchen. And in the meantime, […]
On the Table
Posted inEat + Drink
Night Shift
Since November, when the crew at Chuchi’s Old Town Eats takes off their aprons and heads out at 5 p.m., Seth Pate has been starting his shift. He’s been running New Americana, a separate nighttime delivery restaurant, out of the kitchen where once he cooked for the former Masaki’s Kyoto Restaurant, prepping and cooking its […]
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From the NCJ Archives: Say it with Heart this Valentine’s Day, Literally
Editor’s note: Say it with heart this Valentine’s Day, like literally, with this recipe shared by Journal Arts & Feature’s editor Jennifer Fumiko Cahill called Love in Disguise. For years I’ve flipped through an old Irish cookbook in my kitchen and smiled at a recipe for beef heart called Love in Disguise: You cut the […]
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Chicken and Dumplings from Here and There
Over the 30 years that I’ve lived in the United States, I still haven’t tried American chicken and dumplings. When I saw a few posts from fellow foodies, I was curious about this traditional comfort food. After reading some recipes, I found some similarities to my rural hometown’s dough soup. I know its name is […]
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Cabbage for Comfort
Varieties of the species Brassica oleracea are exuberant plants — it’s a pity we don’t often see them in their glory. Broccoli, the various cultivars of cabbage and cauliflower all produce abundant leaves crowning the head. They sort of show off, profuse in their physical presence. Brassicas are generous and it seems to me fitting […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Crab Cioppino
My mom’s recipe for crab cioppino became well known at the Ivanhoe in Ferndale when my dad owned it in the late 1940s. They were raising my two older sisters before the rest of us were born. Maybe my mom was raising them, as my dad was a bar owner. Her recipe was locally famous […]
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Small and Scrappy
On Thursday afternoon, after a morning spent prepping and cooking, Patricia Cambianica is writing the week’s menu out on the chalkboard. In the past, diners at Arcata’s La Trattoria would crane their necks from their tables to choose but these days a snapshot of the offerings — shitake risotto, chicken and polenta, chocolate cake with […]
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A Coffee and Chocolate Pairing on the Waterfront
If all goes to plan, by this time next year, the sea air along Eureka’s waterfront could carry notes of coffee and chocolate. The former home of the North Coast Co-op, empty since 1992 and rehabilitated by the late Pierre LeFuel and Karen Banning, is to be home to an expanded Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate […]
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The Missing Mustard
Earlier last year, the toilet paper shortage made headlines across the country but another shortage became a pressing but silent issue across Humboldt County: the Larrupin Dill Sauce shortage. Confusion over who makes it, combined with the pandemic, historic California wildfires, food shortages, lockdowns, power shutoffs and other anomalies the last few years have thrown […]
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Jinx Cake
We’re a superstitious newsroom at the Journal. We knock wood in unison at the mention of any good news. Because digital editor Kimberly Wear once went through a massive electrical blackout at the Times-Standard years ago after uttering the phrase, “Hold down the …” — you know what, we just don’t say it and I’m […]
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Delivering for Restaurants and Drivers
Jim Richards is going to have to chat later. He’s pulled off the road coming from Arcata Pizza and Deli to King Salmon so we can talk, but another call comes in from the USVetsDeliver dispatcher (who’s also his girlfriend). Once we hang up, he’s off to take another job. The service area is McKinleyville, […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Thanksgiving in December
I started writing this article to submit it well before Thanksgiving, but life had other plans and I had to abandon my original plan. What I wanted to say, however, is still relevant and the recipe still in season, so I picked up where I left off and finished it. My big heartfelt thanks to […]